Tracklist:
- Question Your Place
- Frontline
- Feel Afraid
- Numb
- Cash King
- One Good Thing
- Blood of Saints
- Down To Nothing
- Drama Queen
- In Darkness
- Journeys End
Engel have been going some time, and, despite a
pretty good reputation, they were a band I’d had little to do with before
now. A five-piece outfit from Sweden’s
famed Gothenburg school of melodic extremes, Blood of Saints is their third
studio album, and has already received some high-scoring reviews. This is a 38-minute collection of 3- and
4-minute metal anthems, sporting an adventurous mix of death, modern, and
electronic sounds, in a style which immediately had me thinking to Scar
Symmetry. Certainly, there are
similarities: continuous interplay between death and clean – but very much
heavy metal – vocals; driving riffs and beats; and pounding techno blasts. Alongside some hurried youtube research into
their past material, all this gave me high hopes.
Not justified, as it turned
out. In a musical sense, this is a
severely limited record. Electronic
effects are bold – or, perhaps more accurately, loud – throughout, giving a
fairly distinctive edge to the band’s sound.
But there is almost no variation here.
Serenading the album into existence in a pulsating scream, they dominate
the opening track with synthetic screeches and snarls. For the rest of the album, they are pushed
to the background, but still emerge to provide a near constant backing of the
same small handful of effects. This
limitation is typical of the record, which offers generic, on-beat rhythms and
a prominent combination of growling guitars and pounding drums.
None of this is helped by Engel’s
inability to break out of the most basic of song structures. Committed to producing an album of pounding
metal anthems, the band serves up a single song structure throughout, each one
progressing through a verse and a chorus, before entering a short instrumental
breakdown and finally bowing out with a last rendition of the chorus. This approach dictates the direction of both
the music and vocals, which go, simultaneously, from the crunching aggression
of the verse to the melodic strains of the chorus. As the band races through their repertoire, only tracks 3, Feel Afraid,
and 6, One Good Thing, offer any relief, both giving greater focus to melodies,
which dominate throughout each.
In such a short album, minutes
are precious. And they are not best
spent in such monotony. By track 4, a
feeling of déjà vu creeps over the listener; by track 8, you’re checking to see
whether you’ve accidentally put the album on repeat. All this might have been made tolerable by a high standard of
music. Unfortunately, this is missing. Unadventurous and predictable chord
sequences provide a base for a series of very safe melodies, some of which move
almost as little as the band’s style (check out, in particular, track 2,
Frontline). In fact, the only time the
music seems to stretch the skill and invention of its creators is in the breakdowns,
which alone offer more complex rhythms and interplay between instruments.
In its defence, the album is
clearly aimed at a memorable experience, open to fan participation and live
performances. As far as this goes,
then, the lyrics serve their purpose, giving blasts of repeated, punchy lines,
based on common themes of identity, social injustice, and rebellion. Too often, though, this doesn’t seem to be a
purpose worth serving. Melodies,
whether vocal or instrumental, don’t so much stick as jar, and while there are
good old fist-punching beats and lines, the recordings often trip themselves up
on their production. Fine, guitars are
crisp and synths are raw, but when it comes to drums, there is so little depth
to the recording that it can be hard even to tell the difference between snare
and bass. Vocals belong in a category
of their own. Aimed at capture the fury
of the album’s themes, they involve a range of hoarse rasps and painfully
strained growls. The effect is
reminiscent of air being forcibly squeezed from the vocal chords of an inflated
teenager.
There’s a part of me that feels
like I’m simply missing something here.
Clearly, these guys are pretty popular, and some very well-informed
reviewers seem to think a lot of the album.
But for me, there’s a sad irony in it all. As the lyrics of track 10, In Darkness, recommend, “open your
mind and you’ll see so much more.” It’s
advice that Engel would have done well to follow themselves. Their failure to deviate from the most basic
of musical clichés is the failure of the whole album. While the style is not one which – in any case – immediately
appeals to me, there are so many problems with the final product that Blood of
Angels cannot even be considered a success by its own standards. Swedish metal, with all its innovations, novelties,
and characteristics has made some fantastic contributions in recent times. This is not one of them.
Production – 3/5
Lyrics – 3/5
Album Cohesion – 2/5
Music – 4/10
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